


On Character Cards

by Cinnamonbookworm



Series: Poe Party Prompts [1]
Category: Edgar Allan Poe's Murder Mystery Dinner Party (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, GET IT, Goldfish Candy Cane, HAHHA, Party Preparations, Poe Party!!!, SOMEONE has a crush and i'm not gonna say who but you all know who bc they're painfully obvious, ghost best friends are great, niceness, phrases from POEms, someone else also has a crush but even they don't know it yet, the poem annabel lee is really sad guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 17:28:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7854406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinnamonbookworm/pseuds/Cinnamonbookworm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A character card is approved before the party.</p>
<p>
  <i>Or: Edgar spends too much time designing a certain someone's character card and that certain someone knows it.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Character Cards

**Author's Note:**

> So I know this is a little change of pace for me, but one thing you all should know about me is that Shipwrecked Comedy over on YouTube has a special place in my heart, and their interactions with fan creators (such as myself) are really really amazing and incredible and just GO WATCH POE PARTY OKAY?

Annabel Lee stares down at the white card in front of her not quite sure how to react. She fiddles with it, turning it around a few times, admiring the curvy lettering and running her thumbs over the soft parchment. Then she places it down on the kitchen table in front of her, so she can better see it in the soft morning’s light.

“Pretty great, huh?” Lenore asks, floating behind her like she’s reclining on a Roman couch. The perfect picture of unfazed glamour. All she’s missing is a bunch of purple grapes in her hand.

“Well,” Annabel starts, “it’s a very lovely card.” 

It’s true - the intricate silver designs have to had been done by hand, and she can almost picture Edgar hunched over that tall dark wooden desk of his, a thousand imperfect copies of this card littered all around the ground as he agonizes over the silver curlicues, his forehead crinkled a little like it had that one time she’d tried to show him how to frost a cupcake.

Her ghostly best friend rolls her eyes at her statement. “I mean the _character._ Do you like it?”

“Um,” Annabel purses her lips a little. “I don’t think it’s supposed to matter if I like the character or not. After all, murder mysteries’ characters are usually _assigned_ , aren’t they? At least, that’s how Eddy explained it to me last time we went to one of these-”

“Oh, who cares what Eddy thinks?” Lenore waves a transparent and perfectly-manicured hand through the air, wrist doing a little flick thing. “What do _you_ think?”

“I… like it?” Annabel asks. She’s not entirely sure what the point of this conversation is, since the rules of a murder mystery dinner party don’t typically involve participants deciding their characters on their own, but she’d hate for her Lenore to have come all this way down the street for nothing.

“Are you sure?” she questions, raising a dark eyebrow. “Because if it’s not perfectly up to your standards I can get Poe to do a rewrite. Ya, know… Spice it up a little.”

Annabel shakes her head and steps back a little in shock, thinking on the time he must have spent perfecting this card. She can’t _waste_ his time, can she? She already let him write her all those lovely poems before telling him she was seeing Eddy. He’s spent so much time on her; the least she can do is keep him from spending more of it.

“No, no,” Annabel insists. “It’s fine. It’s wonderful, actually. I’m perfectly content to be…” she takes a closer look at the name on the card. “Goldfish Candy Cane?”

“Oh my God, you didn’t even read it, did you?” 

Lenore attempts to pluck the card out of Annabel’s hand, and her fingers chill a little as the ghost passes through her. Annabel pulls the card back up to her face.

“I can read it,” she protests. “I just… The script is really beautiful, and…”

“That’s it! I’m making him re do it!” Lenore floats her feet down to the ground and begins to march away but Annabel can’t let her do that, she _can’t_ , because he really shouldn’t have to do this for her. It’s really nice and everything, and she would know, because she would do the same thing, but that’s just because she’s nice - in general, to everyone. She bakes _everyone_ cupcakes with extra sprinkles on their birthday and nicely sends replies to _everyone’s_ letters and would wait outside in the rain for two hours with an umbrella for _anyone_ who got locked out, even though she’s really only done it that one time and that was for Edgar, but, really, she just did it because she’s _nice,_ definitely not because of anything else.

“Wait!” she calls out. “No! Just! Just… tell him it’s a lovely invitation (because it is), and that I’m really looking forward to being at his party, and, Lenore?”

Her friend had turned around when she’d called out, so she doesn’t really _need_ to say her name again, but she does anyway because Lenore is such a pretty name, really, and she likes saying it. Also, she really wants her message to get to him.

“Yeah?”

“Tell him thank you, from me?”

Lenore rolls her eyes again but Annabel can see the smile behind all that sarcasm - the hidden bit of sweet in her whole deal that just makes her absolutely wonderful to be around. “ _Fine,_ ” she groans. “But only because you’re my BFFL.”

“Yay!” Annabel says, and she can’t help but clap her hands together. “Okay. I’m very excited for this party. Is there any particular dish I should bring?”

“I mean…,” Lenore starts. “I can ask, but… He really just wants to see your face again, and maybe read you another one of his six billion sulky poems about the,” she brings out her finger quotes, “‘Beautiful Annabel Lee.”

Somewhere along the line, he’d started calling her that. Never directly, never in spoken word, but it’s painted across the top of all the curled parchments various ravens used to drop at her feet. He’s said so many lovely things about her. Even now, when the poems no longer fall from the air, smelling like something smoky and dark and rich, she can recall every one of them.

_Beautiful. Bright eyes. Angels could not be so happy in heaven. Light of life._

Such light and airy musings for someone who always seems a bit down. Little rays of sunshine that make her day brighter. Or, well, they used to.

“I _like_ his poems,” Annabel protests. “They’re… sweet.”

“Do you want me to tell him that too, or-”

Annabel’s green eyes widen. “Oh no. No, um. Definitely not. I just got all that raven poop cleaned up so I’d kind of rather the poems be kept inside his house, you know. I mean the poems are wonderful and lovely and everything, but… the ravens.”

Lenore shudders a little bit at the mention of the black birds that hang around Edgar’s house. Annabel _dislikes_ them a lot. At first they were a small price to pay for the sweet words, but once she started seeing Eddy she really got to thinking they could be a bit of a nuisance. She’s glad Edgar finds company in them, though. He really does seem to be quite lonely in that little house of his. He has Lenore, she knows that, but only one friend in the whole world sounds like a truly tragic existence. 

And, well, she supposes he must have more than just them and Lenore, since he’s hosting this dinner party, which the invitation said was specifically _For Friends_ , but it’s hard to imagine what other sort of friends he might have.

Other ghosts? More ravens? Small black puppies that look up at you with big brown eyes and make you unable to go straight away because if you could _just make them smile_?

“I got you, girl,” Lenore says, with a wink, and then she’s off, white dress whooshing through the air and then through the closed front door.

Annabel smiles as she watches her go, thinking of Edgar scrawling away at the character cards. She hopes at the very least he finishes the cards for his other friends before making hers legible. After all, she doesn’t really care what character she is, as long as everyone has a good time.

That’s all that matters, right? That everyone has a good time.

And, who knows? Maybe she’ll bring another cupcake. He seemed to enjoy the last one well enough.


End file.
